There are various sets of observed weather data available from different sources for different sets of weather data locations. For example, the National Weather Service, along with other public providers like the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense, produce over a thousand surface weather observations each hour (or more frequently, as conditions warrant) in the continental United States. In addition, some private firms have installed weather instruments that augment the official network of government-provided weather observations.
There are also various sets of derived weather data for still different sets of weather data locations. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,082,382, incorporated herein by this reference, describes methods for estimating or deriving weather observations/conditions for any given location using observed weather conditions from neighboring locations, radar data, lightning data, satellite imagery, etc. Such estimating and deriving techniques may be used to periodically determine weather data for a set of weather data locations. For example, The Weather Channel® network, recently launched its HiRad (High Resolution Aggregated Data) technology that periodically calculates weather data for 1000 times more locations than was previously available, providing another set of periodically stored weather data.
Current systems and methods do not fully utilize the many sources of periodically stored weather data and have limited capabilities, if any, for providing near real-time weather data (observations or approximations) about locations for which weather data is not stored. A variety of situations exist where a particular location is specified for which the quick retrieval or calculation of an approximation of the current weather conditions or forecasts is desired. For example, it may be desirable for an on-camera meteorologist (OCM) to be able to discuss a map during a live video show and retrieve current weather data for the particular location depicted on the map. In such a case, it would be desirable to be able to quickly retrieve the most appropriate weather data for the selected location. Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods that can quickly select approximate weather data for a specified location by associating the selected location with a location or locations for which weather data has been collected and stored from one or more weather data sources.